NFU lobbies for crackdown on absent crofters

ALTHOUGH the Crofting Bill published in December is seen as a big improvement on the original launched early last year, NFU Scotland is still pushing for more powers in the new legislation whenever crofting land is abandoned.

Next week the Scottish Parliament's rural affairs committee starts to take evidence in the first stage of dealing with the proposed legislation and NFU Scotland – whose membership includes about 800 crofters – is among the organisations coming before the committee.

Speaking yesterday, Jo Durno, chairwoman of the union's crofting, Highlands and islands working group, said: "In our latest submission we have recognised that the bill is significantly improved from last May's draft, but there are still areas of concern for us.

"In particular, we believe the current proposals for dealing with absenteeism, misuse and neglect of crofts and croft land do not tackle these thorny subjects well enough, and we have made suggestions to the Scottish Government on how we think this can be improved."

As it stands, the bill would place a duty on the Crofters Commission to take action in respect of absenteeism and neglect by both tenants and owner-occupier crofters.

"This should help to ensure that crofting contributes to economic growth by requiring crofters to be resident on or near their croft and to put it to some form of productive use."

However, the union believed that a better way of ensuring that crofts are actively farmed would be brought about if the new legislation concentrated on cases where crofts were abandoned, rather than through the absenteeism of a crofter.

"Neglect is the more significant issue that must be addressed through the bill rather than absenteeism." But Durno admitted that a combination of absenteeism and neglect provided the worst situation of all.

She wanted the legislation to be robust on this issue, so that crofts could be actively managed.

She said: "The primary aim must be one of ensuring active management of crofts rather than determining who should be doing the crofting."

The proposed legislation suggests residency within a certain radius of the croft, but the union says any distance measurement would be arbitrary and should only be a rough benchmark.